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Monday, March 23, 2009

Despite this posted under Stefan's name, it's your all-time favourite Bee writing here, cursing her husband's German kezboard, if zou know what I mean. We are currently in Dresden for a meeting of the DGP (German Physical Society), and we are LATE, as Stefan keeps pointing out. Therefore I'll just wish you a good start into the week, more from the conference later.

9 comments:

You can remap the keyboard in soffware and carry key covers to fix the letters. For a little adventure... get a Klingonese key set. Homeland Severity has been having a slow decade, reduced to strip searching old ladies in wheelchairs and sniffing sneakers. Curiously, America does not seem to have been protected against witches and flat feet.

So your meeting is at the German Physical Society, how could have I been lead to think you initially where instead going to head to the great outdoors. If I recall correctly the DGP is the German equivalent of Britain’s Royal Society. So are you or Stefan a member of the society or as otherwise known as a fellow. It should be interesting to learn of what transpires at one of the better known of the ivory towers. I was however somewhat surprised by the complaint you had regarding your Ehegatten keyboard as I would have thought it to be a Germenglish one at the very least:-)

The German Physical Society is the equivalent of the American Physical Society or the Canadian Association of Physicists. The Germans don't call their members fellows but just members (Mitglieder). However, I find these associations or societies to be pretty much similar in every country I know them. I have to admit though that I like the magazine of the APS (Physics today) much better than that of the DPG (which is called "Physik Journal"). Best,

The statue shows King John of Saxony. During his reign, the opera house was rebuilt as it looks today after a devastating fire. Actually, the building as it stands today is a reconstruction according to the original plans following the destruction in WW II.

The photograph with opera and statue is also famous as the symbol of a well-known German beer.

The Semperoper was not completely destroyed, and they did an extremely careful job to rebuild it, even rediscovering and using 19th-century techniques of decoration (e.g. the artificial marble columns).

More recent 'reconstructions' seem to me to go far in the direction of Kitsch. E.g. the Frauenkirche with a *lift* halfway to the top and steel-and-glass construction in the dome and confectionary-style pastel paintings inside .. more like Frauenkuchen, it is clearly oriented as a tourist money-maker.

Go to the Kreuzkirche instead, that still has some real history to it. Or the cathedral, maybe there you could hear a real Baroque organ.

And the new houses or whatever they are just around the Frauenkirche, I never saw such anonymous and faceless things, like computer simulations rather than anything actually built by human beings.

The explanation of the statue and its significance I find truly inspiring. That is despite its destruction it was raised again from the ashes. It is things like this that remind me that no matter how senseless our species can be at times, its this aspect of purpose that with it brings hope and with it continuance that I find as what’s truly unique and noble.